Voces: Andes


Unlocking Forests’ Potential in Latin America and the Caribbean  

Juanita Fonseca ˙ ˙ Voces

A cloud forest in Costa Rica Florent Mechain / Flickr / CC BY 2.0 DEED
Tropical forests, which cover 6 percent of Earth, are our planet’s largest natural carbon sink and our first line of defense against climate change. Even with massive human effort at reducing emissions, reaching the 1.5-degree target is not possible without forest restoration.    Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), whose forests…Read more +

Q&A with David Goldwyn: Will Maduro’s Electioneering Decrease Appetite for Guyanese Oil?

David Goldwyn ˙ ˙ Voces

Photo of Nicolas Maduro Federico Parra / Flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED
On December 3, President Nicolás Maduro held a referendum asking citizens whether the Essequibo region should be “reclaimed” as part of Venezuelan territory. Whether prompted by the 2015 discovery of abundant oil reserves, or the need to gain popularity before the 2024 presidential elections, Maduro ordered Petróleos de Venezuela, SA…Read more +

An Unprecedented Migration Crisis: Characterizing and Analyzing its Depth

Manuel Orozco, Patrick Springer ˙ ˙ Voces

Photo of migrants in Panama Servicio Nacional de Migración de Panamá / Twitter
This piece offers a look at the current migration trends and points to large differences that characterize this situation as a crisis: the scale, composition, nature, and management of migration is outside conventional or historical patterns. Aspects of this unprecedented migration pattern are not within the control of government authorities and policy makers. The recent migration wave to the US border has been referred to as a crisis. Media references point to the drama of people arriving and passing through the Darien, Central America, and Mexico to characterize the problem. Others have pointed out the increasing arrivals into US cities in numbers that are hard to manage by local communities.Read more +

Venezuela Can’t Confront Covid-19 Without a Political Truce. Will Washington Help?

Feliciano Reyna, Temir Porras, Verónica Zubillaga ˙ ˙ Voces

Maduro speaking in the Palacio Miraflores Credit: Gobierno Bolivariano de Venezuela
Perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives—inside Venezuela and across its borders—now depend on whether our leaders can put aside their battle for control, engage politically in good faith, and momentarily put the wellbeing of citizens first by taking the urgent steps needed to combat the virus crisis and its consequences.Read more +

Colombia: To Frack or Not to Frack?

Lisa Viscidi, Sarah Phillips ˙ ˙ Voces

March against fracking in San Martín, Cesar. Esperanza Proxima/Flickr/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
For over a decade Colombians have been debating whether or not to allow oil companies to use hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to produce oil and gas from shale rock, a technique that has been controversial in many countries. The high court’s decision last week to uphold a moratorium on fracking suggests the increasingly polarized debate is far from over.Read more +

Can Colombia Make Peace with the JEP?

Tamar Ziff, Julia Searby ˙ ˙ Voces

Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz / Facebook
President Duque must confront a new test of his leadership rather than put the JEP controversy behind him. Duque has remained silent on the referendum thus far, but now must decide whether to accept the judgment of the Colombian Congress and Constitutional Court and allow the transitional justice process to move forward, or join his mentor Uribe’s continuing efforts to undermine the JEP. Read more +

Peru’s Slow Unwinding

Tamar Ziff, Ben Raderstorf ˙ ˙ Voces

Cesar Jose Honostroza Pariachi / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Peru’s inclination to growth over institutionalization could be seen as a sort of libertarian experiment—getting the state out of the way in a country where economic mismanagement has more than once led to disaster. But, while in the short term Peru has defied research that shows that institutional factors—such as corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and lack of trust and satisfaction in government—are consistent structural obstacles to prosperity, cracks are beginning to show. Read more +

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